Kurds Call for Military Help to Defend Kobane – Spurned by Stop the War Coalition

Kurdish fighters from Turkey and Iraq are scrambling to help defend a vital Kurdish safe haven in northern Syria, where tens of thousands of Kurds have fled after an offensive by Islamic State (Isis) militants.

The border region of Kobani, home to half a million people, has held out for months against an onslaught by Islamists seeking to consolidate their hold over swaths of northern Syria. But in recent days, Isis extremists have seized a series of settlements close to the town of Kobani itself, sending as many as 100,000 mostly Kurdish refugees streaming across the border into Turkey.

Kurds near Downing Street demand heavy weapons and antitank missiles from the UK government for fight against Isis.

Members of the Kurdish diaspora have been staging protests and hunger strikes around the world in support of calls by Kurdish leaders in Syria for weapons to help their forces fighting Islamic State (Isis) in the besieged border town of Kobani, where they fear a massacre if support does not arrive soon.

While Kurds have taken to the streets of European cities, those in Britain have initiated a hunger strike close to the gates of Downing Street as part of a campaign calling for the UK to provide Kurdish forces with advanced weapons.

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Those taking part in the London protest include sympathisers of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organisation in many western states including the UK and has close links to the Kurdish Democratic Union party (PYD), a group representing Kurds in Syria. It says that its calls for arms have been rebuffed by the United States and European nations and blames Turkey for obstructing his efforts.

Kurdish fighters mounted an increasingly desperate defence against the Islamic State group’s advance on the Syrian town of Kobane on Friday, calling for international help and warning that the militants had advanced to within 1 kilometre of the city.

At least 60 mortar rounds fired by the Islamic State group bombarded the town on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as Kurdish fighters pleaded for help from the international community.

“For about 16 days we are defending Kobane. We are alone,” a Syrian Kurdish official, Idris Nahsen, told AFP by telephone. “We need help from the international community. We need weapons and ammunition,” he said. Huge plumes of smoke were seen rising from Kobane, which is also known as Ain al-Arab, as its outnumbered defenders came under intense fire from the jihadists who have advanced to the city’s gates despite continuing US-led airstrikes against their positions.

The Observatory said a Chechen member of the jihadist group was leading the assault. Turkish officials vowed not to let the largely Kurdish town fall into the hands of the militants, a day after the Turkish parliament voted to approve military action against Islamic State group targets in both Syria and Iraq.

“We will do whatever we can so that Kobane does not fall,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, adding that about 186,000 people had flooded across the border from Syria in less than two weeks. Ankara has not specified what action it is prepared to take to prevent Islamic State group fighters from taking the town, which would give the Islamist group control of an unbroken stretch of Turkey’s more than 900-kilometre (560-mile) border with Syria.

Turkish officials have cautioned against expecting rapid military steps following parliament’s authorisation, and it remains unclear if Turkish armed forces will be used against the militants. Turkey has also not announced whether it will allow the transit of lethal weaponry across its territory or if it will restrict its participation to offering humanitarian and non-lethal aid.

Syria warns against Turkish ‘aggression’

The Syrian government said Friday that any Turkish military intervention on its soil would be considered an act of aggression and urged the UN Security Council to prevent Ankara from taking any such action. Damascus said Turkey’s position “represents a real aggression against a member state of the United Nations”. Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that it remained a Turkish “priority” to “remove the Syrian regime“.

The United States has been working to build a broad international alliance against the jihadists who have declared an Islamic “caliphate” across large areas of Iraq and Syria where they have committed widespread atrocities. The Pentagon said that aircraft from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined US warplanes in bombing raids Friday against jihadist tanks, oil refineries and a training camp in Syria.

US aircraft also conducted three air raids in Iraq, including two northeast of Fallujah. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Friday that his cabinet had authorised the deployment of special forces to advise and assist Iraqi forces alongside the British, Canadian and US advisers already on the ground.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is seeking parliamentary approval for a plan to send up to six CF-18 fighter jets to Iraq as well as increase the number of Canadian advisers on the ground to up to 69 from the 26 previously deployed. A vote, which is expected to approve the proposal, is set for Monday.

‘Your religion is threatened’

Saudi Arabia’s top cleric urged Muslim leaders to strike the enemies of Islam with “an iron hand” in an apparent condemnation of the Islamic State group on Friday.

“Your religion is threatened. Your security is threatened,” Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh told thousands of Muslims who had gathered from around the world for the annual hajj pilgrimage, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

“These criminals carry out rapes, bloodshed and looting,” he said, adding that “these vile crimes can be considered terrorism” and their perpetrators have nothing to do with Islam.

Despite the airstrikes, Islamic State fighters captured parts of the town of Heet, one of the last pro-government bastions in Iraq’s western Anbar province, police sources said Friday.

The jihadists also blew up a key bridge in Iraq’s Salaheddin province as they retreated in the face of an offensive by pro-government forces.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

This has appeared on the Stop the War Coalition’s (StWC) site, by Kevin Ovendon (a leading member of George Galloway’s Respect Party).

After Ovendon’s an analysis of the Kurdish issue, the positions of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, dominated by Masud Barzani’s KDP party and the role of the PKK/YPG, within the context of the hostile stand of the Turkish government towards the Kurds, we have this pile of generalities:

The US-led bombing of Iraq and Syria will not save the Kurds. Western policy, its military and its arms are not there to save the Kurds.

The bombing is already hitting innocents in Syria. It is allowing even the hideous IS to pose as a resistance force.

In fact, IS is much more interested in beheading “sorcerers” (as do the Saudi allies of the West) and stealing priceless antiquities (as do corrupt officials in Baghdad) than it is in fighting to recover Palestine – alongside Hamas, Hezbollah and the other forces which are truly in the West’s sights.

The bombing is wrong in itself. It is also the false justification for each reactionary state and force in the region to add to the death toll and deepen sectarianism: a carnival of reaction.

Every time that has happened in the past century two peoples in the region have suffered more than any other: the Palestinians and the Kurds. In the name of justice for both – stop this escalating war.

And we could have done without this distasteful comment,

The only interest that Washington, London, Ankara and Israel have in the Kurds’ suffering in IS-areas is in a mountain of corpses with which to hide their own murderous policies in the region. Every time one of these global or regional powers have advanced in the area it has been at the expense of the Kurds.

Counterfire(closely associated with the StWC) has published a call by the respected cultural and humanitarian Kurdish group Day-mer, which condemns Western and other interventions in the regions. It largely limits itself to calling for humanitarian aid to Kurdish refugees.

From the StWC and its allies there is no reply to the call for military aid.

No means are offered to stopping the growth of a “mountain of corpses” , other than halting Washington, Ankara, London and Israel(?)’s actions in Syria and Iraq.

Or how to fight the genociders of Isis/Islamic State.

By contrast this is having a big resonance on the left and progressive circles: